Mar da Palha

Dawn is blue, and sadness quietly slips through the deserted alleys, weaving itself into the bare branches stripped by the force of the northern nocturnal quadrant. The muteness of the estuary, that silent chronicler reminding me of the transience of all things, no longer bothers me.

What bothers me is an undying difficulty in categorising situations. The relentless search to relativise recent moments of heightened tension. The absence of alchemy and a primal need to empty out everything that has been accumulating over the past weeks.

The release happens along the riverbanks in the first hours of the morning, before the twilight that weaves the veil of all words already rooted in the rubble of loneliness resting on Cala das Barcas, while the river goes mad from the deprivation of oxygen, leaving traces of salt on my lips.

The kaleidoscopic movement, that one, concludes in silence, in an insipid melody of few notes, as the hours pass slowly over the marshes rising in the face of a thirst that grows like courage.

The kind that climbs within us like ivy in flames.

The kind that always requires a fear to exist.

The kind that incites us to walk far, and close to anywhere.

And nowhere.